Struggling with changing company culture to deliver new technology productsUnrealistic goals set on first level managementSome areas of the business are over hierarchical and dis-empower technical experts to make decisions

Advice to Management

Embrace the change which is needed and trust the expects to make the right technical decisionsSet realistic goals and clear priories given the constraints of resource and timing

I have been working at Jaguar Land Rover full-time (More than 3 years)

Pros

Fantastic brands; big expansion plans; big rate of growth; competitive salary and reward packages. It's an exciting time to work in Automotive, let alone for such a rapidly evolving company. Overall, I still step back and smile about working here.

Cons

Big company politics; D grade Engineers have big responsibility and perhaps too little power; evolving processes can be confusing. Making the jump to management is rightly difficult, but I wish more opportunities to be an engineering manager, not 'just' a line manager.

Great brand and a high energy environment. Some flexibility however it depends on your Manager as there's a mix of the Good, Bad and Ugly so need to ask around as the wrong un's are well known.

Cons

Management need to 'walk in the workers shoes' to see how difficult it is to do the simple things. Difficult processes and a sign off for everything culture kills momentum and morale. Initiative overload with many targets and limited time to deliver means high stress and arguments a plenty. Managers ( bad ones) just demand and do not care about the issues and constraints.

Advice to Management

Use the systems and procedures yourselves to see how difficult it is to deliver targets and performance improvements. It is getting better slowly.

I have been working at Jaguar Land Rover full-time (More than 3 years)

Pros

- great people with some really great work expertise- good salary

Cons

-Travel to work and parking are really bad-Procrastination is tolerated, especially among the people who have been there for a long time- Lack of clear directives from the senior leadership- Metrics driven company ( as long as the excel matrix is green, doesn't matter if the problem is not resolver )

Advice to Management

- Need to bring fundamental changes on the way the departments communicate between each other to enable a more fluent problem definition and fix. ( that's first step)

Stability for permanent employees is almost a given. Good work-life balance and people will be polite for the most part.

Cons

Old fashion culture. Things do not change and a very strong "This is how we do things for so long" mentality fills the air.Not happy to admit it, but trends seem to show that management and promotion to the upper levels is focused on the behavioural skills (which are all based on British culture) rather than engineering skills.This means an excellent engineer from another background has a very hard time been promoted to any level higher than a D-grade position, unlike the many young graduates from the UK accelerating at a much faster pace without the equivalent engineering experience or skills.

Advice to Management

Start looking at the actual engineering skills and promote the people that are worth it. Become a truly global company, by dropping the Midlands based office mentality.